For some inexplicable reason, each time the sun dips into the sea, you can just about make out the sound of fire on water, in its final moments before once again being consumed by the watery depths.
Mykonos Greatest Kiss – A kiss is just a kiss*… but not when it happens in the Mykonos Grand’s embrace
May 1, 2012I cannot recall my first kiss, the one that irreversibly marked the end of my childhood years. But I can clearly remember the first kiss, elusive and awkward, with the person I married and brought two children into this world with. It seems like such a long time ago… I can’t stop myself from smiling each time the image rises to the surface of my memory, always so fresh and playful. An email I received from the famed Mykonos Grand Hotel on Mykonos –our favorite destination then, now and I daresay evermore –helped dust off the cherished memory of that first kiss and posed a lighthearted challenge with their Mykonos Greatest Kiss contest. Could we do it? After almost twelve years of marriage? With two children? With the burden of our responsibilities weighing down on our conversations and postponing the simple joys of togetherness and companionship for another day?…
Since I was a child, I have dreamed of getting married while the beating of my heart could still take my breath away, when I still needed time to get ready before he saw me, when all of my hopes and desires would still be vibrant and pure, untainted by the demystification that comes with the passage of time. My dreams have finally come true!
At 42 years young, Shirley Valentine had already taken a back-seat to life, watching the days drone by in the same, meaningless way. She would find herself talking to the kitchen wall, where the only semblance of a “life” seemed to resonate from a small poster hidden away on the inside of a cupboard; a simple Greek tourist office brochure tantalized Shirley. The background photograph of a whitewashed chapel topped by a humble cross glowing in the rays of the setting sun, surrounded by the vast turquoise sea, an image so typical of the islands of the Aegean Sea, seemed to call out to her.